Privacy Policy | Catalyst Clinical Research

This is the Privacy Policy of Catalyst Clinical Research, LLC and its subsidiaries, to be collectively referred to here as “Catalyst.” The Policy explains how and why we process any personal data we collect about you when you interact with us (including in those ways described in the “What personal data do we collect about you?” section below).

Our privacy practices reflect applicable legal requirements, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or “GDPR.” (This regulation may be referred to later as “Applicable Data Protection Law”).

Please read this Privacy Policy together with any other privacy policy that we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so you are aware of how and why we use your personal data. This Privacy Policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to supersede them.

It is important that the personal data that we maintain about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us using the details set out in the “How to Contact Us” section below.

Please note, we reserve the right to amend this Privacy Policy at any time, normally by posting an updated Policy on our website and, where appropriate, notifying you by e-mail. If you are a frequent visitor to our website, please check frequently to review any updates or changes to this Privacy Policy.

Who We Are

Catalyst is comprised of different legal entities. This Privacy Policy is issued on behalf of the Catalyst group of companies, which includes Catalyst Clinical Research, LLC registered in the state of North Carolina in the United States; Catalyst Clinical Research BV with its registered office in Voorhout in the Netherlands; Catalyst Clinical Research UK, Ltd. with registered offices in London, United Kingdom. Catalyst Clinical Research APAC Ltd. Registered in Australia, Catalyst Clinical Research Europe, Ltd, registered in the United Kingdom,

Catalyst (which may be referred to as “we,” “us,” or “our” in this Privacy Policy) is the controller responsible for the personal data we process about you in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact us using the details set forth in the “How to Contact Us” section below.

What is personal data?

Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable natural person (this means an individual human being). Anonymous data, where it is not possible to determine to whom the data relates, is not considered personal data.

What personal data do we collect about you?

As a clinical research organization which also provides resourcing services, we collect, use, store, and transfer different kinds of personal data that are provided to us by visitors to our website, employees, potential employees, contractors, clients and patients.

Website collection:
With the exception of “cookie” data, the data we collect is voluntarily provided by website visitors and those who do not want us to have their data can simply choose not to provide it.

The types of data we may collect can be grouped as follows:

Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, title, education.

Contact Data includes address, email addresses, Skype address and telephone numbers which you may provide to us.

Usage Data includes information about how you use our website and our services, if applicable.

Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing or job opportunity or company update information from us and our third parties, and your communication preferences (i.e., opting out). This data may be collected either online or offline.

Data you provide to us:

Request information about Catalyst or inquire about a job opportunity or posting;
Inquire about a job opportunity from our site’s postings or via email;
Subscribe or respond to our marketing campaigns;

Data we collect about you: With regard to each of your visits to our website or “Our Sites” (Our Sites can include our presence on social media platforms, including Facebook and LinkedIn, among others, which are governed by the Privacy Policies of their respective platforms), we may automatically collect the following data:

Technical data, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; and
Data about your visit, including the full uniform resource locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from Our Sites, (including date and time); pages you viewed or data for which you searched; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction data (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.
Data we receive from other sources, such as LinkedIn, or other publicly available websites or social media sites, prior to your engagement with us.

The Catalyst website uses so-called cookies and analytics tools to help deliver our online services, identify any service issues, improve our services, provide content tailored to users’ personal preferences, and monitor site traffic and usage.

What are cookies?

For further explanation of cookies, see https://gdpr.eu/cookies/.

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier, that is sent to your browser from a web site’s computers and stored on your computer’s hard drive.

Cookies do not harm your computer and do not contain any viruses. Cookies serve the purpose of making our website more user-friendly, effective and safe. Cookies are small text files which your computer files and your browser stores on your computer.

Most of the cookies we use are so-called “session cookies” and “persistent cookies.” Most cookies will be deleted automatically after your visit on our website. Other cookies remain on your computer until you delete them. These cookies may keep you signed in or enable us to recognize your computer during your next visit. We do not use cookie data for tracking or marketing purposes, but they do help us to understand how visitors use our website.

We recommend all users clear cookies and cache regularly as a matter of good computer practice and to avoid browser/security issues.

What types of cookies do we use?

We use cookies on our website for two primary purposes:

Functionality — We use cookies so that we recognize you on our website and remember your previously selected preferences. These could include what language you prefer and the location you are in. A mix of first-party and third-party cookies may be used.
Advertising — We use cookies to collect data about your visit to our website, the content you viewed, and the links you followed, and we collect information about your browser, device, and your IP address. We sometimes share some limited aspects of this data with third parties for advertising purposes. We may also share online data collected through cookies with our advertising partners. This means that when you visit another website, you may be shown advertising based on your browsing patterns on our website.

Direct collection and use of data:
Where Catalyst collects Personal data directly from individuals, we will explain the purposes for which we are collecting and using it, the types of third parties to which Catalyst will disclose that data, and the choices and means, if any, Catalyst offers, at the time of collection. The notice will be provided in clear and concise language.

Identity data: Includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, title, education, tax number Your Good Clinical Practice (GCP) scores, if applicable to the position;
(if applicable), and any other identity data potentially found on a curriculum vitae or resume provided to us.

Financial Data includes Employee Identification Numbers, Tax ID Numbers, social security numbers, bank accounts and wiring information used in order to pay employees and contractors who work for us.

Transactional Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services you have provided for us, including wiring data, if applicable.

Data you provide to us:
Catalyst may collect various categories of personal data (as explained below) for the following purposes:

People Related Data. Where you are a Catalyst Employee, we will process personal data to carry out and support our people and training operations, including, but not limited to:

Evaluate your qualifications for a role,
Administration and management of your pay, bonus (where applicable), pension, training,
Communicating with you or your emergency contacts;
Authentication of your identity when gaining access to computer system applications, through fingerprint recognition for example;
- Personal data changes;
- Employment status changes;
- Travel and expense planning and reimbursement;
- Evaluation of employee performance;

Where you are a job applicant personal data will be used for the evaluation of the suitability of you for the role. You will also be asked to contact an approved third party to enable them to perform a background check in line with your local legislation on employment checks to evaluate your suitability for the role.

Trial and Research Related Data. If you are participating in trials or research being managed by Catalyst, including patients, their spouses/partners, caregivers, and relatives, clinical investigators or other study personnel, and other consultants, contractors, managers, personal data will be used to carry out the relevant trial or study and other related services and ensure appropriate, timely and accurate compensation and payment logistics should you require it. This usually involves transferring personal data to the relevant trial /study sponsor, any of its affiliates and third-party service providers performing services related to the study such as monitoring, data management, clinical research monitoring services, safety monitoring, etc.

Business Contacts. Catalyst collects personal data such as your contact data for marketing activities focused on sales of new products and services, requests to participate in market research, or attendance to a show or meeting that cover Catalyst’s business offerings and other such business activities. You can opt-out of this at any time.

Health Care Professionals. Catalyst collects data about health care professionals directly from health care professionals, from public sources and from business partners. We use this data in connection with various health care activities, including clinical trial startups / interest, health care outcomes analysis, market research activities, etc.

Data Analytics Functions. Catalyst obtains and processes data about individuals for multiple data analytics purposes. In most situations, this data has been anonymized or de-identified and is no longer personal data. However, when we are asked to provide this service to a client the data can be sent to us for the purpose of anonymization or de-identification. In other situations, the data that is obtained and processed is pseudonymized. This pseudonymous data may be used for research purposes.

Where a Catalyst entity receives personal data from another Catalyst entity or other entities, including when acting as a CRO or data processor processing personal data under the direction of a customer, it will use such data in accordance with the notices provided by them and the choices made by the individuals to whom such personal data relates.

How will we use the data about you? We use the personal data you provide, and that we collect about you in order to:

Manage our relationship and engagements with you before, during, and after being engaged by Catalyst;
Communicate with you in response to queries, or to check in with you if you are actively on assignment;
Provide you with information about us and our services, including job opportunities (“Services”),
Provide the Services to you on request, and to fulfil our obligations in respect of the same;
Ensure appropriate, timely and accurate compensation and payment logistics should you be engaged by us;
Maintain and administer our website and any other online or social media channels, platforms or Our Sites that we operate, and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
Improve Our Sites, to ensure content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer or device;
As part of our efforts to keep Our Sites safe and secure, and to prevent fraud;
Measure or understand the effectiveness of marketing activities we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant marketing to you;
Provide suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of Our Sites about services and opportunities which may interest you or them.

We may collect details about your use of Our Sites for the purposes of aggregate statistics or reporting purposes. Aggregated data (your data combined with other people’s data) may come from your personal data but, provided it does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity, the aggregated data is not considered personal data for the purposes of this Privacy Policy. For example, we may combine and analyze your use of Our Sites to determine the number of users accessing a specific website feature. However, to the extent the aggregated data could still be considered personal data, we will continue to process it in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Our legal basis for processing your data. We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Where the processing is necessary for the performance of a request or contract you have entered into with us, including a request for one of our Services;
Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation: (i) to assist the EMEA, FDA or other public authority upon inquiry (ii) to identify you when you contact us; or
Where the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Such legitimate interests may include:
Correspondence or communication with you, i.e., keeping you up to date on the latest announcements, updates, job opportunities, events;
Improving our candidate or user relations;
Compliance with a request from you in connection with the exercise of your rights;
For the management of queries, complaints or claims; and
For the establishment and defense of our legal rights.

Please note, we may process your personal data using more than one legal basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us using the details provided in the “How to Contact Us” section below if you need details about the specific legal ground upon which we are relying to process your personal data on any given occasion.

We will only use any of your special categories of personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your special categories of personal data in the following circumstances:

Where we have your explicit consent;
Where the processing is carried out in the course of our legitimate activities with appropriate safeguards;
Where the processing relates to special categories of personal data that you have made public;
Where the processing is necessary for establishing, exercising, or defending legal claims; and
Where the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest as provided in domestic or EU law.

Marketing

If you provide your prior consent, or where we are otherwise permitted to do so under Applicable Data Protection Law, we may also use your personal data to contact you by email and mail with details of services, job opportunities, publications and other related materials we think may be of interest to you or that you have opted in to receiving.

Catalyst will only share your data with third parties for marketing purposes with your prior consent or where we are otherwise permitted to do so under Applicable Data Protection Law. In such cases, we may pass your personal data on to other Catalyst entities, other companies, trade bodies or associations so that they may offer you their products and services.

You have a right at any time to stop us from contacting you or sharing your personal data for marketing purposes. If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, you can opt-out or unsubscribe via the email that is sent or by contacting us using the details set out in the “How to Contact Us” section below.

Please note, where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not delete any personal data provided to us in relation to other requested transactions.

Disclosures of your personal data

We will disclose your personal data in the following circumstances:

To other Catalyst entities and third parties as required for our everyday business purposes, including to our clients, related companies, our business partners, and technical services providers if applicable, including in order to provide you with the Services you request;
Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimization of the Sites;
With credit reference agencies and background verification agencies, to conduct credit checks and background verification and reference checks.
To third parties in the event we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets;
If Catalyst or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets;
To competent authorities (including regulatory and tax authorities), courts and bodies as required by law; or
To protect the rights, property, or safety of Catalyst and our members and non-members, or for internal investigations and reporting. This may include exchanging data with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We will not transfer, disclose, sell or distribute your personal data to third parties other than as set out in this Privacy Policy, unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to do so by Applicable Data Protection Law.

International transfers

Catalyst endeavors to collect, use and disclose Personal data in line with the laws of the countries we do business in.

Where we are required to transfer your personal data across international borders such as out of the US or out of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), we will ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission or the UK Government, whichever is applicable; or
We will undertake the transfer on the basis of a specific contract approved by the European Commission/UK Government which gives personal data the same protection it has in Europe/UK (“Model Form Clauses”). For further details, and a copy of the text of these Model Form Clauses see: For EEA: Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC) | European Commission (europa.eu) For UK: International data transfer agreement and guidance | ICO
We will ensure, where necessary, consent to the transfer has been captured either by us directly or through our sponsors / clients / customers.

Data security

We endeavor to put in place reasonable and appropriate technical security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered,disclosed or destroyed, taking into account, the risks involved in the processing and the nature of the personal data being processed.

We maintain and follow security administration policies and procedures designed to prevent, detect, contain, and correct violations of measures taken to protect the confidentiality, integrity, availability and security of your personal data. These policies and procedures provide an adequate framework of controls that safeguard your personal data. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, clients, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We endeavor to ensure that any third parties or vendors that we work with also have appropriate technical and organizational measures in place and follow the procedures above.

How long will you use my personal data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

For further information as to any specific retention periods that might apply to personal data we hold about you, please contact us using the details set out in the “How to Contact Us” section.

In some circumstances we may anonymize your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research, marketing or statistical purposes. If we do that, we may use this data indefinitely without further notice to you.

Our Sites may contain links to other websites which are operated by third parties and not by Catalyst. We are not responsible or liable for any content on these websites or for any interaction you have with them. This Privacy Policy only applies to our website and Sites so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.

Third party websites

Your Legal Rights

In certain circumstances, you have rights under Applicable Data Protection Law in relation to your personal data. In relation to certain rights we may ask you to confirm your identity and where applicable, to help us to search for your personal data. Except in rare cases, we will respond to you within one month from either (i) the date we have confirmed your identity or (ii) where we do not need to do this because we already have this data, from the date we received your request. You may have the right to:

Request access to your personal data . This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your data unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your data which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the personal data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the personal data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the personal data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your personal data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated data which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the data to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain Services to you and we may need to suspend or terminate your access to Our Sites. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
Complain if you are concerned about the way we have processed your personal data. You will need to contact the appropriate authority:
- Australia: OAIC
- California: Contact Us | State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General
- EU/ UK Data Protection Authorities: Our Members | European Data Protection Board (europa.eu)
- USA: Contact the Federal Trade Commission | Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov)

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us using the details set out in the “How to Contact Us” section below.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

We keep our Privacy Policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this webpage. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 15 November 2023.

How to Contact Us

Please contact us if you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or the information we hold about you:

Data Protection Officer: Claire Walker

By email: privacy@catalystcr.com